Testing speedtest.net to local servers gets me basically my line speed which is cool. (Via Ethernet of course)Testing to overseas servers and the speed drops off, which I would expect give the distances involved

But my question is: What sort of drop of should I expect when testing to say, Sydney, LA, London.Would it be a percentage or a fixed number?

I've seen some speedtests to LA that seem to get 80% of their line speed, but others that only get 20-30%, which seems like a huge difference.

How much of this is due to the way speedtest.net works vs actual throughput available or lack of capacity from my ISP?

Most of the problems with speed are likely to be related to internal wiring issues. Read this discussion to find out more about this. Your ISP is not intentionally slowing you down today (unless you are on a managed plan). Also if this is the school holidays it's likely you will notice slower than usual speed due to more users online.

A master splitter is required for VDSL2 and in most cases will improve speeds on DSL connections. Regular disconnections can be a monitored alarm or a set top box trying to connect. If there's an alarm connected to your line even if you don't have an alarm contract it may still try to connect so it's worth checking.

It's a combination of various things, including TCP window issues that possibly still occur, and transit beyond Australia and the US gateways that your ISP has very little control over. Because the internet in the US is also such a shambles there are many congested interconnection points which can also affect speeds within the US.

sbiddle: It's a combination of various things, including TCP window issues that possibly still occur, and transit beyond Australia and the US gateways that your ISP has very little control over. Because the internet in the US is also such a shambles there are many congested interconnection points which can also affect speeds within the US.

"The Southern Cross cable monopoly has shown its adeptness at keeping competition out of the market, paying hundreds of millions in dividends while business calls from New Zealand on Skype stutter along."

I don't have any problem with skyping people even in the UK - about as far away as it is possible to be, so I don't really believe what he is saying, but it got me thinking about how much the international cable plays a role in our experience with the internet today

Obviously my choice of last mile technology doesn't impact how much international bandwidth my ISP purchases, but presumably I get a bigger 'share' if I have more capacity to my house to suck it down with.i.e. better plan in NZ delivers a better speed result overall, so a ADSL speedtest to the USA will be worse than a VDSL speedtest to the USA, which is worse than a 100Mbps UFB speedtest, which is in turn worse than a 1Gbps speedtest, right?

Is there any sort of speed I should be 'expecting' with an overseas speedtest to 'test' sxs, and therefore test how much capacity my ISP is purchasing, (if I pick the sxs landing point to avoid as much USA congestion as possible)? I have VDSL which gets around 50Mbps, and my USA speedtest is around 15-20Mbps typically. Is that about right? When I had ADSL, at around 20Mbps, my USA speedtest was around 6-8Mbps. Does that sound about 'right'? If (eventually) I get UFB, should I get better speeds again?

The Southern Cross cable monopoly has shown its adeptness at keeping competition out of the market, paying hundreds of millions in dividends while business calls from New Zealand on Skype stutter along.

That's just being so overly dramatic. No real business uses freken Skype for a business call. Ffs. I don't care how successful Xero is and how clever he actually is that is just purely attention seeking.

Is he mates with Morgan? Did he say that when they announced Pacific Fibre.

If an ISP chooses to buy less capacity than needed, then that's a business decision they've made. Transit beyond intermediate points (such as the US to the UK) is also typically completely beyond the control of your ISP.

If an ISP chooses to buy less capacity than needed, then that's a business decision they've made. Transit beyond intermediate points (such as the US to the UK) is also typically completely beyond the control of your ISP.

As for Skype, remember it's a best effort service.

That's pretty much what I thought.

I am wondering if there is any way to tell whether my ISP is under-purchasing on capacity by running speedtests and comparing them with local, but allowing for the impact of latency.

If I get 50Mbps locally with VDSL, what's the maximum speedtest result I should be able to get the USA if my ISP has heaps of capacity?

e.g. on a 50Mbps VDSL connection, obviously I would never expect to get 50Mbps to the states on speedtest.net (right?), but is there any way to estimate what I could get - by looking at the latency and calculating the maximum theoretical speedtest result. e.g. latency is 200ms, therefore my 50Mbps VDSL cannot do better than XMbps to LA.

Then by comparing that to the actual result I get , I can see (roughly) if I am getting a good international connection or not.if Maximum is, say, 30Mbps and I am getting 25Mbps, that's pretty decent. But if I am only getting 5Mbps then that's not so good.

The Southern Cross cable monopoly has shown its adeptness at keeping competition out of the market, paying hundreds of millions in dividends while business calls from New Zealand on Skype stutter along.

That's just being so overly dramatic. No real business uses freken Skype for a business call. Ffs. I don't care how successful Xero is and how clever he actually is that is just purely attention seeking.

Is he mates with Morgan? Did he say that when they announced Pacific Fibre.

Try doing some speedtests to Fiji and Hawaii. As the Southern cross cable runs through both of those countries on it's way to the USA. And lots of other cables stop in at 1 or both of those countries.https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3786148265

e.g. on a 50Mbps VDSL connection, obviously I would never expect to get 50Mbps to the states on speedtest.net (right?), but is there any way to estimate what I could get - by looking at the latency and calculating the maximum theoretical speedtest result. e.g. latency is 200ms, therefore my 50Mbps VDSL cannot do better than XMbps to LA.

Then by comparing that to the actual result I get , I can see (roughly) if I am getting a good international connection or not.if Maximum is, say, 30Mbps and I am getting 25Mbps, that's pretty decent. But if I am only getting 5Mbps then that's not so good.

using latency to determine max speed is a bit simplistic - sure you can figure it out for a single TCP connection, but most speedtest.net sites use multiple connections so the 'expected maximum' calculation becomes complex quite quickly (overheads start becoming more of a consideration)

the number of allowed connections is also dependent on what version of the Ookla speedtest software the server is running (and there's no easy way to check this from what I've found)

Aredwood: Try doing some speedtests to Fiji and Hawaii. As the Southern cross cable runs through both of those countries on it's way to the USA. And lots of other cables stop in at 1 or both of those countries.https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3786148265

I was in Fiji recently, the only worse internet I've had was Samoa where it effectively didn't work. In Fiji I got 0.38Mbps down, 0.81Mpbs up, and 1539ms latency - that was between an Island and their capital, Suva. Unsure what kind of connections they use to the islands, but they're not great.

sorceror: here are some real world results (done just now from my UFB connection):

this made 16 TCP connections to reach that speed - clearly latency isn't an insurmountable issue anymore for speedtest.net

assume you are on a 200Mbps plan?

based on TimA's chart above, 16 TCP connections seems too low to get that result.Ping of 172ms gives less than 5Mbps per connection (based on that chart), so 16 connections would, presumably, max out at less than 80Mbps, no?